The two of them sat facing each other on a sofa in the corner of the hall, yet Michael Ovitz didn't speak right away. There was a clear unwillingness in his expression, a resentment he couldn't quite swallow.
Simon didn't press him. He simply let his gaze drift over the crowd, idly taking in the soft, lilting strings floating over from the dance floor.
A tall blonde woman in a white off-the-shoulder gown noticed the silence between Simon and Ovitz. After a brief hesitation, she approached and tested the waters with a greeting. "Hi, Mr. Westeros."
She was truly tall, towering over most people. In heels, she looked like she was pushing one-ninety.
Simon tipped his head up and smiled at her. "Hi, Miss Hall."
Surprise flashed across her face, mixed with a perfectly measured touch of delight. "Mr. Westeros, you know who I am?"
"Mick's girlfriend, Jerry Hall, right?" There was a faintly amused glint in Simon's eyes as he patted the seat beside him. "Did Mick not come tonight?"
"He's in the UK," Jerry Hall replied casually, taking the offered seat without hesitation. She nodded politely to Ovitz, then turned her attention back to Simon, smoothly finding a topic. "Mr. Westeros, I heard Batman is almost done with post?"
"Yeah. And you can just call me Simon."
Simon nodded as he answered. He remembered that Jerry Hall had played the mob boss's wife, disfigured by the Joker, in the first Keaton-era Batman, and the coincidence felt oddly entertaining. And he had to admit it: for a woman who'd managed to keep the notoriously unfaithful Mick Jagger on a leash for so many years, she really was breathtaking. Early thirties, right at the peak of her beauty.
"That's such an honor, Simon," Jerry said, slipping seamlessly into using his name. She edged a little closer, subtle as a whisper. "You can call me Jerry, too."
A certain big-eared cartoon mouse popped into Simon's head, and he laughed. "That sounds like a boy's name."
"Can't be helped," she said with a shrug. "Five sisters in my family. My dad was desperate for a son."
"Did his wish ever come true?"
"Nope."
Simon put on a sympathetic look.
After a few more light jokes, he noticed Ovitz growing impatient. Simon raised his glass slightly toward Jerry. "Jerry, Mr. Ovitz and I have something we need to discuss."
Jerry reached into her clutch and handed him a business card with easy confidence. "I'll be in Los Angeles for a while, Simon. Maybe we can find time to grab coffee."
Simon took the card and nodded. "Sure."
Seeing that Simon had no intention of offering his own card, Jerry stood up with good sense, and didn't forget to nod again to Ovitz on her way out.
Ovitz ignored the woman who'd just left. He watched Simon casually slip the card into his shirt pocket, then finally said, "Simon, if Barry and the other three all move to WMA, and we call it even on everything unpleasant from before, what do you think?"
Simon had guessed plenty of ways Ovitz might try to handle this, but he hadn't expected that solution.
Still, pushing Barry Levinson and the others to jump to WMA really did seem like the cleanest way to dissolve the feud. Simon's close relationship with WMA was common knowledge. If Ovitz did this, he could also protect those clients' careers as much as possible.
But Simon had no intention of agreeing. "Michael, I'm not the kind of person who holds grudges so hard that I send guys with baseball bats to drag someone into an alley and beat them half to death over a few insults. You need to understand, given the resources I have now, if I actually decide to target someone, their ending won't be pretty. The thing is, I'm also not the forgiving type. For the people who've provoked me, all I ask is that they never appear in my line of sight again."
"Simon, Barry and the others aren't showing up in front of you every day."
"Michael, you know what I mean. Right now, half of Hollywood is in my line of sight. Of course, there are still a few corners left. I'm not planning to look into them. Being too perfect isn't good. So they can stay there."
Ovitz thought of Paramount.
If the young man in front of him was willing to let go of the bad blood from those two scripts being stolen, Paramount certainly wouldn't mind aligning itself with Daenerys Entertainment.
Maybe MGM too, and even the increasingly washed-out Orion. But clearly, he had no intention of doing that.
Just because he didn't want perfection.
From their previous encounters, Ovitz could tell Simon had perfectionist tendencies. Now, when a perfectionist stopped pursuing perfection, it didn't necessarily mean he was getting sloppy or falling apart. It could mean he'd become even stronger.
After all, nothing in this world was ever truly perfect.
After another stretch of silence, Ovitz finally said, a little defeated, "Simon, if Barry and the others leave CAA, will that end it?"
Simon nodded. "CAA has a lot of excellent film people. I've honestly been looking forward to the chance to work with you."
Since he'd made up his mind, Ovitz didn't drag his feet. "Then you also need to guarantee that WMA won't poach from CAA anymore."
"I can't agree to that, Michael. I'm just close with Jonathan. WMA isn't my company. This is competition between talent agencies."
Keeping the talent agencies in a competitive balance was beneficial to Simon. There was no way he would restrict that.
Ovitz realized something as well and didn't say anything more. He stood up and extended his hand. Simon shook it. Without another word, they reached an unspoken understanding.
Leaving the party hall, Ovitz got into the car waiting outside the Four Seasons and immediately used the car phone to call Barry Levinson and the others.
Simon didn't know how Ovitz spoke to them, but the very next day, word spread through Hollywood: Barry Levinson, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, and Meg Ryan, four front-line names, were about to leave CAA.
CAA soon confirmed the news.
Officially, the statement was that the four were leaving for the sake of their own career development.
After that, Levinson quickly made public his new project with Paramount, Avalon, with a budget of fifteen million and a planned release next year.
Dustin Hoffman announced he intended to take a year off and go to the UK to perform theater. Almost immediately, industry gossip followed: Hoffman's scenes in Warren Beatty's new Disney collaboration Dick Tracy had been completely cut.
Tom Cruise's agent, Paula Wagner, left CAA together with her client, and through a Los Angeles Times announcement they declared the founding of Cruise/Wagner Productions.
Meg Ryan had only just become famous last year because of When Harry Met Sally…, making her the least established of the four.
After everything happened, Meg Ryan's publicist also announced her resignation. None of the big and small talent agencies in Hollywood showed any sign of extending an olive branch, and after a frantic scramble, the actress had no choice but to hastily announce that her sister would temporarily serve as both her agent and public spokesperson.
Then paparazzi caught Meg Ryan's boyfriend of more than a year, Dennis Quaid, appearing close and affectionate with an unknown actress at a West Hollywood bar. Pressed by the cameras, Quaid admitted bluntly that he and Meg Ryan had recently broken up.
Compared to the still ongoing drip-feed beating of Michael Ovitz over the "infantry" incident, the departure of Levinson and the other three from CAA was met with an almost abnormal silence from North America's major mainstream newspapers. What appeared on the pages were only bland, harmless official wire pieces.
Most of the general public, people who weren't sensitive to gossip, would read the news and assume the departures were simply because they were unhappy with Ovitz, who'd been under media fire lately.
Of course, Hollywood never lacked small tabloids eager to chase big scandal for attention. But those papers usually had tiny readerships, and they didn't dare dig up the truth too openly. At most, they hinted at it in half-veiled phrases.
If you really thought about it, tabloids understood better than anyone which people you could provoke, and which people you absolutely couldn't.
If Simon Westeros were just a director, you could hype whatever you wanted.
Public figures existed to be gossiped about.
But when that director was also a super-rich billionaire with the power to cover half of Hollywood with one hand, then to avoid being sued into bankruptcy, even the gossip rags didn't dare get too bold.
As for Hollywood itself, when reporters pressed for opinions on Barry Levinson and the others leaving CAA, even stars once known for having "big mouths" kept theirs firmly shut.
This time, Simon Westeros had exerted himself with almost casual ease, yet it was enough to make many people realize that in the post-studio era, another true Hollywood power figure, a genuine tycoon, had been born.
In recent years, studio executives had generally taken a flattering, almost ingratiating posture toward A-list stars in order to lure them into their films. Even big shots like Steve Ross went out of their way to curry favor with people like Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, and Barbra Streisand.
Now Simon Westeros not only refused to lower his posture and proactively befriend stars, he'd casually reached out and knocked several of Hollywood's hottest A-listers straight out of the clouds.
Anyone with eyes could see it: as long as Simon Westeros didn't loosen his grip, even if Barry Levinson, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, and Meg Ryan could still survive in Hollywood on their old fame, losing the easy access to resources they once enjoyed meant their careers were fated to slide downhill.
The four of them swallowed reality with soot on their faces, never publicly challenging Simon Westeros, because they understood exactly where they stood.
In the end, Simon Westeros still hadn't pushed things to the absolute limit. If they jumped out now to provoke him, it would only be picking a fight with their own future. In the days that followed, whenever people saw that young man who always seemed calm and modest, as if he didn't have a single sharp edge, even some of the most arrogant stars couldn't help feeling a trace of awe.
Trouble never came one piece at a time.
While the industry was still whispering about the inside story of Barry Levinson and the others leaving CAA, the release of the new Forbes 400 list of America's richest instantly set off yet another storm of public opinion.